A new report shows that Research in Motion's BlackBerry platform overtook Apple's iOS in terms of U.S. mobile Internet usage in November.

StatCounter on Wednesday released new data that shows BlackBerry ahead of the iPhone for the first time ever. RIM's BlackBerry OS had a 34.3 percent Web browsing share in November, slightly ahead of Apple's 33 percent.

The Web analytics company also revealed that Google's Android continues to grow in share. A year ago, it had an 8.2 percent total share, while this year that grew to 23.8 percent.

In the same period, Apple's iOS has seen its Web browsing share tracked by StatCounter drop from 51.9 percent to 33 percent. The data is based on 15 billion page views per month, collected from more than 3 million websites.

The company said that based on current trends, BlackBerry and Android combined will double iOS in terms of Internet usage in the next year.

"These figures suggest that developers should not be developing solely for the iPhone to the exclusion of BlackBerry and Android," said StatCounter Chief Executive Aodhan Cullen.

It's a different story globally, though, where Nokia's Symbian mobile operating system has a 31.9 percent share. Apple's iOS is in second with 21.9 percent, and BlackBerry is in third with 19.3 percent. Google Android takes fourth with 11.6 percent, according to StatCounter.

In 2008, StatCounter revealed that the iPhone's Mobile Safari had quickly become the top mobile browser in the U.S. The Irish company said at the time that mobile browsing on the iPhone was three times greater than BlackBerry.

The latest figures are also very different from numbers released by the AdMob mobile advertising network in September 2009. That snapshot found iOS representing 40 percent of mobile browsing, while RIM's BlackBerry had shrunk to just 8 percent.

My guess is iOS users are spending more time on apps than web browsing.. I know I do. Stuff I'm looking at are ones I could've used the web to look up but I'm using an app instead to get it (news, sports, fb, etc).

I keep reading about how Nokia is dominant internationally, including here in the UK, but I just don't see it anymore. I used to see Nokias everywhere, but for the past few years it's been all Blackberrys and iPhones, with a rare Android sighting.

It's interesting though that Blackberry, which isn't really even a smart phone, is still so popular. Those things are everywhere here, and not just with men in suits, I see a lot of young women with them too.

My guess is iOS users are spending more time on apps than web browsing.. I know I do. Stuff I'm looking at are ones I could've uses the web to look up but I'm using an app instead to get it (news, sports, fb, etc).

And the disparity will only continue to grow. However, this is by design. Steve Jobs predicted that people would spend less time on the web and more time on Apps which makes for more effective advertising. Apple isn't going after web advertising, it's going after in app advertising.

My guess is iOS users are spending more time on apps than web browsing.. I know I do. Stuff I'm looking at are ones I could've uses the web to look up but I'm using an app instead to get it (news, sports, fb, etc).

Interesting that this would happen after Apple beats RiM in unit sales. It seems odd that as Apples user base grows that RiM would be catching up after iOS has such a large lead. It makes me wonder if RiM has bested Apple this past month in unit sales and what(if) theyve done to their OS to make browsing on it so much more useful.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wurm5150

My guess is iOS users are spending more time on apps than web browsing.. I know I do. Stuff I'm looking at are ones I could've uses the web to look up but I'm using an app instead to get it (news, sports, fb, etc).

Does StatCounter not capture data from apps, too? I was under the impression that apps connected to the internet via HTTP requests and were therefore added to these results.

Quote:

Originally Posted by drewyboy

It's because of tiered data plans. Plain and simple.

I love how plain and simple is derived from no hard evidence and with a complete lack of considering other variables. This is only StatCounters info, which is highly limited in scope, but most glaring is the fact that very few users ever exceeded the limits of what is now offered by tiered plans from AT&T. Therefore, for your comment to be a plain and simple truth users would have to be artificially limiting their usage to a fraction of their tiered data limits. For us to believe that youll have to provide some evidence to support your claim.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

My guess is iOS users are spending more time on apps than web browsing.. I know I do. Stuff I'm looking at are ones I could've used the web to look up but I'm using an app instead to get it (news, sports, fb, etc).

My guess is iOS users are spending more time on apps than web browsing.. I know I do. Stuff I'm looking at are ones I could've used the web to look up but I'm using an app instead to get it (news, sports, fb, etc).

That was my exact thinking. I remember a while ago, someone said Apps were sanitizing the web because instead of people going to websites, they just open the app instead.

Blackberry isn't getting any more popular, although I know that's how the company will spin it. Blackberry has fewer apps so their users are forced to surf the web instead of opening the app.

The blackberry browser sucks - not seen the very latest version but on every Blackberry I owned and used browsing the Internet was damn painful and I never used it unless I was desperate. On the iPhone I can't believe how much I use the browser - in bed on an evening, waiting for appointments, cooking tea etc etc

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.by Popular Mechanics

There is also a video in that link, too, showing Steve tout the Web 2.0 + AJAX capabilities, saying that this was how developers were going to develop apps for the iPhone. So the original poster was right, people just tend to conveniently forget this fact since the App Store has been the success it is.

edit: no link this time, but I would also like to add that Apple added the SDK after its developers started crying out that it's "revolutionary" web app model wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Whoops, sorry, that's probably my fault. My wife's company gave her a Blackberry and she couldn't work out how to use it, so I tried to make it work. Must have left that thing hooked up to the internet for the whole month without knowing it .....

There is also a video in that link, too, showing Steve tout the Web 2.0 + AJAX capabilities, saying that this was how developers were going to develop apps for the iPhone. So the original poster was right, people just tend to conveniently forget this fact since the App Store has been the success it is.

No, he’s not correct. He clearly stated, "[Jobs] said that third-party apps are unnecessary.” Note that just before pimping the usability of the Safari browser, one of the crowning features of iOS then and now, Jobs explained how Google Maps in the browser wasn’t nearly as good as the native Maps app they created using the Google Maps APIs, which is evidence that Apple knew that apps can offer a better experience than using a web browser. Not having an SDK available at the launch of iPhone OS v1.0 is not equatable to saying that 3rd party apps are unnecessary. Maybe some other platforms could have faired better had they released a good SDK. *cough* WebOS *cough*

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

My guess is iOS users are spending more time on apps than web browsing.. I know I do. Stuff I'm looking at are ones I could've used the web to look up but I'm using an app instead to get it (news, sports, fb, etc).

Bingo! NYT app, huffington post app, espn app, yelp, etc, ad nausium. That's all time that would be normally spent in a browser. And Jobs predicted and planned for this so all is going according to plan for apple. If anything, this is really bad news for google.

No, hes not correct. He clearly stated, "[Jobs] said that third-party apps are unnecessary. Note that just before pimping the usability of the Safari browser, one of the crowning features of iOS then and now, Jobs explained how Google Maps in the browser wasnt nearly as good as the native Maps app they created using the Google Maps APIs, which is evidence that Apple knew that apps can offer a better experience than using a web browser. Not having an SDK available at the launch of iPhone OS v1.0 is not equatable to saying that 3rd party apps are unnecessary. Maybe some other platforms could have faired better had they released a good SDK. *cough* WebOS *cough*

He also said that they would be able to develop apps that worked as well as apps already on the phone, so he contradicted himself in the same speech! I love my Apple products and follow the company probably a little too closely, so don't take these posts as troll-ish, but Steve does have a way of bashing or dismissing something and then coming back with a better version of said thing a little while later. Maybe we should just expect Apple to release anything they specifically say they don't like. (Hello, bigger screen on the iPhone 5!!! )

Whoops, sorry, that's probably my fault. My wife's company gave her a Blackberry and she couldn't work out how to use it, so I tried to make it work. Must have left that thing hooked up to the internet for the whole month without knowing it .....

Maybe all of this "mobile web browsing" is coming out of RIM's campus in Waterloo... I'm just sayin'.

He also said that they would be able to develop apps that worked as well as apps already on the phone, so he contradicted himself in the same speech! I love my Apple products and follow the company probably a little too closely, so don't take these posts as troll-ish, but Steve does have a way of bashing or dismissing something and then coming back with a better version of said thing a little while later. Maybe we should just expect Apple to release anything they specifically say they don't like. (Hello, bigger screen on the iPhone 5!!! )

Thats marketing and showmanship, but to say that they felt other apps were unnecessary or, as some suggest, that they scrapped together an SDK after the developers cried foul is patently false.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

I never browse internet on my iPhone, unless I absolutely must, because frankly the user experience is horrible even with mobile versions of websites on a screen of that small size (plus mobile safari does not have adblock which is essential tool, and that makes it kind of useless, since I don't want to download 1-2 MB of image ads each time I visit a page).

I get to data online though all the time, through dedicated apps. I do Google searches (often using voice recognition to find an address, or phone number etc). I do email etc but not through a browser.

I don't buy it—it doesn't jive with statistics I've seen and it doesn't jive with statistics I can find. Will wait to see if others are reporting the same. My websites certainly aren't, even the business oriented ones, and it doesn't make sense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mario

I never browse internet on my iPhone, unless I absolutely must, because frankly the user experience is horrible even with mobile versions of websites on a screen of that small size (plus mobile safari does not have adblock which is essential tool, and that makes it kind of useless, since I don't want to download 1-2 MB of image ads each time I visit a page).

It isn't an ideal experience, sure, but the mobile browsing experience on iPhone is better than that of any other smartphone or similar device (unless you move into something like the iPad). Android can be very nice as well, depending on the device. RIM is far behind. Their newest device, based on Mobile Safari, is actually decent in terms of web browsing, but it is statistically insignificant for now. Browsing the web on the old-school BlackBerry is what sadness is made of.

And ads are nowhere near that large. Entire page loads are rarely ever that large, unless they are quite multimedia/Flash heavy.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone that can do him absolutely no good. Samuel Johnson